Wenzel dealers and sales representatives in the US will work closely with Laser Design technical personnel to help customers with their questions about laser scanning. Schuster continued, "We will be teaming with Wenzel-Xspect to perform application analyses, demos and services as needed to show the superior capabilities of our WS-Series (Wenzel Surveyor) 3D scanning systems."

Laser Design will also open branches of its GKS service bureau division at key Wenzel-Xspect locations. This will enable dealers to expertly demonstrate the technology at Wenzel CMM locations showing its many capabilities, versatility, accuracy, and speed. ¡§Our Wenzel-Xspect dealers have been asking for a high-accuracy 3D laser scanning solution for non-contact, high-speed inspection and reverse engineering applications. Our partnership with Laser Design brings this technology to our measuring products in a tightly integrated, easy to use system,¡¨ commented Keith Mills, President of Wenzel-Xspect USA.

The ultra-precise Wenzel CMM measuring capability (to ¡Ó 3Ý) combined with the high-speed laser scanning technology make the scanning process fast, automated, user-friendly, and ultimately less expensive than using other measurement methods to analyze complex and free-form shapes. The highly automated 3D laser scanning system utilizes Laser Design¡¦s SLP laser line scanning probes integrated with Wenzel¡¦s CMM technology and includes both a Renishaw PH-10 indexing head along with the industry¡¦s only integrated rotary 4th axis stage. According to Mills, ¡§The combination of the laser probe¡¦s PH-10 compatibility with rotary 4th axis rotation of the part to be scanned, provides the only automated 6-axis scanning system in the industry for high accuracy measuring of the most complex parts and assemblies.¡¨

Because the laser scanning system projects a line of laser light onto all of a part¡¦s surfaces while cameras continuously triangulate the changing distance and profile of the laser line as it sweeps along, the problems of missing data on an irregularly shaped surface are greatly reduced. The laser line moves back and forth over the part¡¦s surface until the complete area is captured digitally. The system measures details and complex free-form geometry so that the object can be exactly replicated digitally. Laser scanners measure articles quickly, picking up to 75,000 coordinate points per second, and generate huge numbers of data points without the need for special templates or fixtures.